Oh, the meandering tangents I can take.
After spending last evening at John Marshall's house, it seemed only fitting to visit his grave site this morning.
Besides, it had been weeks since I'd tended the graves of my charges, Henrietta and Daniel. Walking down Fourth Street to the cemeteries, I had a funeral procession to my right and banks of honeysuckle to the left. Both somehow seemed fitting.
At the Hebrew cemetery, I checked on Henrietta's small, pink painted stone to make sure last week's storm hadn't dislodged it. It was still tucked into the curve of her headstone, as faithful as she apparently was.
I became devoted to Henrietta when I saw that her stone referred to her as "consort," which I mistakenly assumed meant "other woman," but have since been informed by the Shockoe Hill Cemetery folks can mean wife.
Over at Shockoe, I found five of the six pebbles I'd placed on Daniel Norton's grave site still there but one was missing and nowhere in sight. I went to my pebble source corner and found a worthy replacement for the man who discovered Virginia's indigenous grape.
Tending duties completed, I went off to follow my tangent: finding John Marshall's burial place. It took a while because I'm directionally challenged (even after looking at the map twice) but there are worse ways to spend a morning than traipsing around a graveyard, so I didn't mind.
I somehow missed the enormous tree with a plaque on the side of it saying "John Marshall section" but finally found what I was looking for, fenced in with a small iron railing.
No surprise, there was his adored wife Polly's tomb right next to his, so I unlatched the little gate and went inside to pay my respects only hours after walking though the rooms of their house.
It appeared that no one has adopted the lovebirds because there were no pebbles of remembrance on either tomb. I headed right back to my pebble stash and found a fine, big stone that seemed suitable for the man who dominated the Supreme Court for over three decades and laid it on his tomb.
But I couldn't very well ignore the love of his life who fancied beautiful things, so I found a purple pansy for Polly's tomb, appropriate, I thought, for the uptown girl who'd won the heart of the rough and tumble Fauquier County boy.
I seemed to be the only person at the Marshalls' house last night who was paying their respects this morning.
Walking back a different way than I came, the vacant lots were abloom with blue cornflowers, white Queen Anne's Lace and purple clover, a color scheme chosen by nature and one of my favorites.
At the edge of one of the lots, I spotted a small green plaque I'd never noticed before, despite having walked this way dozens of times.
"Bray's gambrel-roofed cottage 1790, owned by Edgar Allen Poe's foster father," it read. A post-Revolutionary War house practically in my neighborhood? How had I missed that?
And here's where yet another tangent comes in. 1790 was the year John Marshall built his house. Overnight, I'm all about 224 year old houses.
Being the nerd that I am, I came right home and did my research, finding not only a history of the house ("very attractively located at the entrance to Shockoe Cemetery," preservationist Mary Wingfield Scott wrote) but an old picture of the wooden house with the familiar cemetery brick walls and enormous trees looking much like the ones still there behind it.
I read that the wooden house sold for $30 and the bricks for $76 in 1875 and the author had no clue if it had been rebuilt somewhere else.
Now it's just a lot covered in wildflowers a mere mile from the still-elegant Marshall house.
Next time someone asks me why I live where I do, I'm just going to take them on my 1790 house tour and let them see for themselves.
Showing posts with label hebrew cemetery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hebrew cemetery. Show all posts
Friday, May 30, 2014
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Leaving My Mark
I decided the best way to escape the marathon madness was by visiting the dead.
A temperate and overcast Saturday seemed the ideal time to visit Shockoe Hill cemetery, an easy mile and a half walk from my house.
I've been to Shockoe a couple of times, always on St. Patrick's day for their annual salute to all the Irish buried there, but I had a specific grave site in mind today.
Walking up Hospital Street, I came upon the Hebrew cemetery's gate wide open and since I'd never been through it, decided to change that.
Situated on a hill, it was a garden-style cemetery like Hollywood with big trees and picaresque vistas.
One of the first grave markers I read said, "In memory of Henrietta, consort of Cesar Guggenheimer of Rockbridge, Virginia."
Hmm, consort? Not wife? Is that like friend with benefits?
As I was considering the nature of Cesar and Henrietta's relationship, I heard a nearby train whistle and saw puffs of smoke just beyond the hill.
Up a path to the fence I went to watch a train chug by below as they have probably since Henrietta's time.
I saw a massive tree whose trunk had grown so wide it had grown around half of Elias Markens' grave marker, as if it were about to swallow it.
In the Jewish tradition, many of the grave markers had pebbles and even bits of brick on them to show that someone had visited the grave.
Names rarely seen anymore were everywhere, names like Fanny, Yetta, Hortense and Gussie for women and Heinrich, Adolph and Maier for men.
No doubt part of that was because of their birthplaces - Germany, Bavaria, Prussia.
One thing I was not expecting was a Hebrew Confederate burial site with 30 men in it and many pebbles on the marker.
Each post of the metal fence that surrounded their graves was topped by a metal Confederate cap.
Then I found another non-wife, "In memory of Jessica, consort of John Abrahams, so she might rest in peace."
That last line with the "might" made me think that perhaps theirs wasn't a legal relationship, either. Hmm, perhaps that kind of thing wasn't as unusual back then as we might have thought.
When I went to leave, I looked down and found a brightly-painted pebble, of all the unlikely things. sitting just beyond the gate.
I considered where it would do the most good and ended up putting it on Henrietta's grave since her marker hadn't mentioned everlasting peace so she probably needed it more than Jessica.
My work done there, it was on to Shockoe for the main event, the reason I'd come in the first place.
But first I saw all kinds of heartbreaking markers.
Like the one for a five-year old and her Dad. "Nicholas Caire, born in France 1809. Lost his life in 1850 in the vain attempt to save his daughter from a watery grave. Lenora, born 1845. She sleeps here with him."
I saw a forlorn looking purple balloon lying on the ground next to the grave of Confederate soldier Charles Bell Gibson who died April 23, 1865, two weeks after Lee surrendered.
So he made it through the bloodbath of the war but not much more. Damn.
"William Lowery, eldest son of S.A. Lowery, died May 29, 1880 from injuries received on R & F RR bridge, Richmond." He was thirteen.
Enough of having my heart wrenched reading markers like those.
The next half hour was devoted to finding the grave of Daniel Norton, the local doctor responsible for cultivating Virginia's indigenous grape, the Norton, and namesake of the street a few blocks from my house.
It wasn't easy, but eventually I located the stone slab laid on the ground and covered in wet leaves.
Sacred to the memory of
Daniel Norborne Norton, M.D.
Son of John Hatley Norton of England
and his wife Catherine Bush
of Wincester, Virginia
born in November 1794
Intermarried with Elizabeth Jaquelin Call
and afterwards with Lucy Marshall Fisher
Departed this life the
23rd day of January 1842
At the bottom was inscribed "Bowen, Richmond, Virginia," the source of the chiseled stone, I assumed.
I'd read Todd Klimans' book "The Wild Vine" about this man's unhappy life, I'd visited Chrysalis Vineyards with the largest plantings of Norton in the world, I go by Norton Street on a daily basis and I'd tried Norton every place I'd come across it offered. For years I'd been meaning to come here for this.
And now finally, I was at Dr. Norton's final resting place. Just one more thing.
I cleared off the soggy leaves and went looking for remembrances. After digging through leaves in a corner of the cemetery by the brick wall, I found pebbles embedded in the dirt.
Choosing six of the smoothest I could find, I took them back to Dr. Norton's marker and lined them up above the top line of wording.
You are remembered, old man.
Walking home, I considered my morning with the dead an especially satisfying way to have spent a couple of gray hours.
And for future reference, I'm perfectly okay with consort on my gravestone.
A temperate and overcast Saturday seemed the ideal time to visit Shockoe Hill cemetery, an easy mile and a half walk from my house.
I've been to Shockoe a couple of times, always on St. Patrick's day for their annual salute to all the Irish buried there, but I had a specific grave site in mind today.
Walking up Hospital Street, I came upon the Hebrew cemetery's gate wide open and since I'd never been through it, decided to change that.
Situated on a hill, it was a garden-style cemetery like Hollywood with big trees and picaresque vistas.
One of the first grave markers I read said, "In memory of Henrietta, consort of Cesar Guggenheimer of Rockbridge, Virginia."
Hmm, consort? Not wife? Is that like friend with benefits?
As I was considering the nature of Cesar and Henrietta's relationship, I heard a nearby train whistle and saw puffs of smoke just beyond the hill.
Up a path to the fence I went to watch a train chug by below as they have probably since Henrietta's time.
I saw a massive tree whose trunk had grown so wide it had grown around half of Elias Markens' grave marker, as if it were about to swallow it.
In the Jewish tradition, many of the grave markers had pebbles and even bits of brick on them to show that someone had visited the grave.
Names rarely seen anymore were everywhere, names like Fanny, Yetta, Hortense and Gussie for women and Heinrich, Adolph and Maier for men.
No doubt part of that was because of their birthplaces - Germany, Bavaria, Prussia.
One thing I was not expecting was a Hebrew Confederate burial site with 30 men in it and many pebbles on the marker.
Each post of the metal fence that surrounded their graves was topped by a metal Confederate cap.
Then I found another non-wife, "In memory of Jessica, consort of John Abrahams, so she might rest in peace."
That last line with the "might" made me think that perhaps theirs wasn't a legal relationship, either. Hmm, perhaps that kind of thing wasn't as unusual back then as we might have thought.
When I went to leave, I looked down and found a brightly-painted pebble, of all the unlikely things. sitting just beyond the gate.
I considered where it would do the most good and ended up putting it on Henrietta's grave since her marker hadn't mentioned everlasting peace so she probably needed it more than Jessica.
My work done there, it was on to Shockoe for the main event, the reason I'd come in the first place.
But first I saw all kinds of heartbreaking markers.
Like the one for a five-year old and her Dad. "Nicholas Caire, born in France 1809. Lost his life in 1850 in the vain attempt to save his daughter from a watery grave. Lenora, born 1845. She sleeps here with him."
I saw a forlorn looking purple balloon lying on the ground next to the grave of Confederate soldier Charles Bell Gibson who died April 23, 1865, two weeks after Lee surrendered.
So he made it through the bloodbath of the war but not much more. Damn.
"William Lowery, eldest son of S.A. Lowery, died May 29, 1880 from injuries received on R & F RR bridge, Richmond." He was thirteen.
Enough of having my heart wrenched reading markers like those.
The next half hour was devoted to finding the grave of Daniel Norton, the local doctor responsible for cultivating Virginia's indigenous grape, the Norton, and namesake of the street a few blocks from my house.
It wasn't easy, but eventually I located the stone slab laid on the ground and covered in wet leaves.
Sacred to the memory of
Daniel Norborne Norton, M.D.
Son of John Hatley Norton of England
and his wife Catherine Bush
of Wincester, Virginia
born in November 1794
Intermarried with Elizabeth Jaquelin Call
and afterwards with Lucy Marshall Fisher
Departed this life the
23rd day of January 1842
At the bottom was inscribed "Bowen, Richmond, Virginia," the source of the chiseled stone, I assumed.
I'd read Todd Klimans' book "The Wild Vine" about this man's unhappy life, I'd visited Chrysalis Vineyards with the largest plantings of Norton in the world, I go by Norton Street on a daily basis and I'd tried Norton every place I'd come across it offered. For years I'd been meaning to come here for this.
And now finally, I was at Dr. Norton's final resting place. Just one more thing.
I cleared off the soggy leaves and went looking for remembrances. After digging through leaves in a corner of the cemetery by the brick wall, I found pebbles embedded in the dirt.
Choosing six of the smoothest I could find, I took them back to Dr. Norton's marker and lined them up above the top line of wording.
You are remembered, old man.
Walking home, I considered my morning with the dead an especially satisfying way to have spent a couple of gray hours.
And for future reference, I'm perfectly okay with consort on my gravestone.
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